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For the last month or so Facebook has been removing this image from posts that I have made there…apparently they think it is pornographic and we all know that we should not see pornography…

Yes…they are more offended by the sight of pubic hair than the actual historical acts being perpetrated then…and the deadly similarities certain things going on now have to what occurred then.

Wake up…truly. Wake up. Especially if you are a christian, and believe that part of the Gospel includes taking in the outcast, the alien and stranger, and extending God’s love and mercy to the Other.

These people were on their way to die…

Btw, certain readers: you will not find me on FB because I have blocked you…I just do not trust that you will not harass me and make life miserable for me. I have already gotten the message from the so-called network that I am now a hell-bound demon-oppressed deceived person who has mental illness…nothing could be FURTHER from the truth, but there is no speaking to a mind already made up by so many who have literally never known me or even met me.

Other readers, you should be able to see me, and if you can send me a Friend Request that includes some sort of reassurance that you are not a person who is seeking access in order to spy and harm, well, I will consider accepting that request.

I offer because I post a lot of things on that platform now days…it is a bit easier, and leaves Grace Notes to a more artistic place focused on Poetry and Spiritual Writings primarily…

…and here is the original text that went with this image, as I discovered it first on another Facebook post:

“Posted by: Liz Johnson August 13 at 8:01pm

“In light of recent events I would like to share with you one of the most haunting photographs I have ever seen. I first stumbled upon it in a library book as a child of about ten. Until now, I have not shared it with anyone because it seemed too gruesome. Today, I think we should all look at it.

“It is from the early 1940s in the early days of Hitler’s final solution. In those days the Nazis were still working out the most efficient way of exterminating an entire race. They hadn’t yet settled on Zyklon B so they sent squads of soldiers to round up Jewish people, shoot them, and then bury them in mass graves. Witnesses say that the dirt over the graves shifted for several days because one bullet was not always enough for a quick death.

“As a child, I found myself wondering how horrible it would be to face death in that way. How much emotion and fear I might feel. But now, as an adult who works with children I can’t help but think “how awful it must have been for those mothers.” I can see them in my mind, naked, humiliated, and calmly waiting to be horrifically killed. Did they sing softly to their babies? Did they tell them it would be ok? I can barely stand the knowledge that it happened, but they endured it.

“Let us NEVER forget that these terrible things that happened.

“If you can look at that and take up a Nazi flag, then there are no “on all sides”. There is no “everybody did some bad things” you are holding up an ideology that caused those women to die naked with their babies and be buried still alive in a shallow mass grave.

“You cannot refuse to take sides here. There is no middle ground. When nine million people are murdered under an ideology its time to be done with that ideology.”

“I firmly believe what someone in one of the posts above has said- a human being can never be wholesome again after an experience of this sort. My grandfather, a resilient, hard-working man who faced adversity and difficult migrations more times than most, was never truly whole; he was bitter, angry, mad. He succeeded in life by cheating and deceiving others much like what had been done to him. He was not a caring husband or father and left many questions unanswered. I sometimes wonder if one can really cleanse oneself of evil. In the words of Primo Levi’s ‘Shema’…

Consider that such horrors have been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your house,
when you walk outside,
when you go to bed,
when you rise.
Repeat them to your children,
or may your house crumble
and disease render you helpless
so that even your offspring avert their faces from you.”

WOW…powerful writing, no? Moving, rending in the soul…

…and yet. And yet…REALLY?

Is it true that one can never be whole after an experience of this sort? A person was bitter, angry, mad, and “succeeded” in life by doing to others what was done to him.

Here is what is disturbing: what this person chose to do, based on what happened, is the root of the bitterness, anger and madness.

There is never a point where we cease to be culpable for what we choose…because we are always choosers.

Otherwise, explain to me how other human beings who suffered identical horrors and worse emerged and became whole again and wholesome in life…Victor Frankl, Corrie Ten Boom are two that come to mind.

You are not in control of what happens to you…you are in control of how you choose to happen in return to it!

Otherwise, here is your alternative:

At what point do you cease to be responsible? Like for instance, you are beaten up in the body, but not hit in the face…are you culpable for what you choose, or are you now not responsible, being beyond the pale of wholesomeness?

If you suffer the loss of a parent but not a child, does that make you not responsible? Or more responsible?

It’s a sliding scale and no one knows where to draw the line…because the fact is there is no line!

There is only you…and your choice in who you want to be, live to be.

I am gonna tell you sumfin: no one can sully me by doing evil to me. Oh, they can beat me, they can rape me, they can hurt me with words…but I am a strong tower inviolate, so long as I know that I am a chooser and this is mine forever.

A diamond covered in bull shit does not cease to be a diamond…and a person buried in horror can still choose to be shining and human.

Do not seduce yourself with some rinky dinky scale of wrong, and pick a point somewhere on it that says “on this side of the scale, I am responsible, but because of these other things, I am no longer responsible because I cannot ever cleanse myself of evil”…

…cleanse yourself, no…but be cleansed? Yes.

Are we not humans? Are we not free? Even midst the horrors shall we sing of our love.